Brain Storm by Cat Gilbert (detective books to read .TXT) 📖

“ARE YOU GOING to have to kill me after you tell me?” I asked, deadpan, hearing the door close as Mac left the room.

“If it comes to that.” He gave me a tight smile and leaned forward. “I work for a consortium made up of some of the top men and women of this nation. They are not government. Not political. They are watchdogs, guarding the citizens, the constitution and the security of this nation. They go where the government can’t or won’t. I head up a covert team of highly trained specialized men. We do what needs to be done.”

“You’re a mercenary.”

“No, I am not. I’m not for sale.” I could tell by his tone he was insulted. “We don’t start wars, and we don’t fight in them.”

“Then what do you do? And don’t tell me whatever needs to be done. That isn’t going to cut it.”

“Protect you, for one thing. Stop people like Armstrong. Take care of Russian spies when the Government can’t or won’t because of political reasons. Taylor, we don’t start things. We stop them. I work for the good guys.”

“How do you know that, Lars? How can you possibly know what their motivation is? For all you know, they have their own agenda, just like Armstrong.”

“Because if they weren’t the good guys, they’d just have me kill him and be done with it. They’re not going to do that, even though that would be the best thing to protect you. It would certainly be the easiest and, just so you know, that’s my own personal preference, but that’s not the plan.” He said it with enough disgust to convince me he was telling the truth. That he wanted to kill Armstrong was obvious. “Armstrong’s big mistake was bleeding funds into the Agency after the program was scrapped. It doesn’t matter what you do, you can’t hide that kind of money forever. There’s always a way to find it, especially when you know to look for it. Once we knew about the Agency, all we had to do was track the money back to Armstrong. It took a while, but we have him.”

“Sounds like a big operation. Hard to keep quiet.”

He shook his head. “Not as large as you’d think. You get the best, you don’t need as many. Only a handful of people know about it.”

“And you’re the best. That’s why they sent you in here alone?”

“They didn’t send me.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Mac called me,” he answered, surprising me.

“Who’s Mac?”

“Cut the bull, Taylor. I know who he is. He and I go way back. When he got suspicious, he tracked me down. Asked me to look into it.”

“So you just left your job and came to check it out?”

“I was already working with Keith and Vivian. They knew me. That’s why Hughes trusted me. When Mac called and needed help, and Hughes needed an extra man, I simply suggested that I might be a good fit. Worked out well for everyone.”

“You made him leave the room.”

“He doesn’t know about this. Like I said, we go way back, and he knows I can take care of myself. He doesn’t know about the people I work for. About what I do now. I told you, only a handful of people know about it.”

“Then why tell me?”

“So you can make an informed decision. You may not have noticed yet, but you have a bit of a problem. We’ve got no way of knowing who else knows about you. You’re safe for now, but not for long.

“Why?”

“Because you have friends. Or have you forgotten about Candice and Bryan? Or should I say Trinity and Jonas?”

“What have you done with them?” I demanded, my anger rising along with my fear. They were supposed to be waiting for me at the little cabin in Estes Park, but I had a sinking feeling, I wouldn’t find them there.

“They’re fine,” he said quickly, holding his hands up in an attempt to calm me down. “They’re here, in fact. At the Lodge. Along with Mama D.” I sank back in the bed, only half believing him. “They don’t know you’re awake. That’s why no one has come storming in here. I told Jenny not to let them know.”

“Why?”

“Because you have a decision to make. I thought it might be easier without them cluttering up the issue.”

“They aren’t clutter,” I shot back at him, fear lending an edge to my voice.

“They are clutter, and that’s the problem. As long as you’re with them, you’ll be running. Trying to protect them. One day, that’s not going to work. Someone is going to get killed, and if it’s one of them, you’ll never forgive yourself. You know it, and I know it. You make stupid decisions to protect the people you care about.”

“I do not.”

“Yes, you do. The only reason you came to the Agency like you did was to save Mac. If I hadn’t been there, what would have happened?”

I wanted to shoot back an answer, but I didn’t have one. I didn’t know, and it scared me.

“You have options, Taylor, about where to go from here,” he said it softly, realizing he’d made his point. I couldn’t look at him, didn’t want to see the victory in his eyes. “Option one is to run. Go get Mac, Jonas, Trinity and Mama D. Hit the road and go on the run again. If that’s what you want, I’ll get you some new I.D.s, passports, whatever papers you need. You’ll need to keep a low profile and watch your back. Forever. I don’t recommend it, for the very reasons we just talked about, but if that’s your choice, I’ll help you get started.”

I pulled my knees up and wrapped my arms around them, feeling trapped. The picture he painted was the very thing I didn’t want. If we’d wanted to do that, we would have done it in the first place. The whole reason we came to the Agency was to try and get some semblance of our lives back. To live without having to look over our shoulders forever.

“Option two is to let them go. They already know you’re badly injured. It’s a simple thing to let them believe you’re dead. I’ll get them settled, new papers, new lives. Everything they’ll need to start over.”

“What if they found me? What if someone discovered I was still alive and used them to hunt me down? There’d be no one there to protect them.”

“You’d have to go deep. Disappear completely. You don’t look the same, so it won’t be as hard, but it won’t be easy either. You’d have to constantly be on guard. Still, there’s no guarantee. It‘s a chance you’d have to take. Either way, you need to make a decision. We can’t move on Armstrong until we vacate this place. Every minute counts.”

He sat quietly, letting me stew over the decision. I already had a pretty good idea of what we were going to do next. There was the little matter of the gold and the promise I had made Trinity, but what we would do after that was still up in the air.

We certainly weren’t going on the run, and as for abandoning them? That was never going to happen. His two options didn’t fit the bill, and he knew it. He was just setting that stage for the end game. I knew he wasn’t done, and I was content to wait him out, let him finish when he was ready.

“There is a third option,” he said finally, in a hushed voice.

There it was. The whole reason he was here. Lars worked for someone, and they had a plan all their own. One that, I was sure, involved me. I settled back into the pillows and looked at him expectantly. The third option.

I hoped, for all our sakes, it would be a good one.